When Elton John was on tour in America in the 1970s, there was someone on TV who caught his eye.
She was an over-the-top, heavily made up performer who wore her heart on her sleeve and yet seemed in on the joke – televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. You could say game was recognising game.
John – who back then toured in bedazzled hats, cartoonish outfits and sported enough sequins to choke an elephant – was drawn to a woman with caked-on make-up, an ability to connect with fans and the skill to return after a gut-punch of betrayal.
“She fascinated the hell out of me,” John says. “I love people who come back from the dead, more or less. She was completely outlawed and banished, and she fought through that because of her goodness and kindness and her belief and her faith. It’s an amazing story, Shakespearean in a way.”
John has put this Shakespearean heroine’s story to song with the stage musical Tammy Faye and it lands on Broadway this month, championing what he calls “a gladiator on her own terms”.
“She comes from absolute nothing – complete poverty – getting all the fame and the wealth and then losing it all in a world of men,” says book writer James Graham. “There is a universality to that story.”